


Consciousness

by RevengeRaptor



Category: HLVRAI - Fandom, Half-Life VR but the AI is Self-Aware - Fandom
Genre: Bubby (Half-Life) - Freeform, Dr. Coomer is mentioned once, Tube Bubby what will he do in there, Warning for mild depictions of self-harm, and he has a little bit of an existential crisis, black mesa, implied trauma, its mostly just a story about a little headcanon, no other characters besides Bubby, sensory deprivation but not the sexual kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-07
Updated: 2020-12-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:22:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27942941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RevengeRaptor/pseuds/RevengeRaptor
Summary: A little dabble of backstory for Dr. Bubby during his younger days in the test tube. There comes a time when he realizes just how abnormal his life really is, and the scientists seem to react pretty badly to this heightened self-awareness of his.
Kudos: 1





	Consciousness

**Author's Note:**

> Content warning: mild depictions of self-harm, and an implied existential crisis over his own sense of being. That being said, please enjoy!

Green light and mechanical breathing filled the young man's senses as he wearily blinked open his eyes, finding himself enveloped tightly by the thick, viscous liquid in his tank as per usual, hugging him still and letting him float in his enclosed space. Tubes were pressed up into his back and neck, a few into his arms, something likely for testing his vitals and rate of movement, and murky shapes flickered about outside of the tank walls, watching his every move. The young man stirred a little before finally moving himself closer to the tank's edge, pressing a palm to the cold edge and peering more clearly past it with wide eyes at every face that observed him, scribbled their nonsense onto their clip books and chattered between each other, though he couldn't hear it without their speaker in use. They didn't want him to hear them, he was sure of it.  
  
And what about himself? Every day, the young man assured himself of something he quickly learned to be 'consciousness,' and greatly prided himself over that discovery, as well as the researchers who seemed to treat his self-awareness as a revolutionary breakthrough for reasons he was unaware of. He was tall and spindly, described by some to be thin in a complicating way, though he liked himself the way he was, pale skin and all. His hair was rather long and blindingly white, his teeth were sharp and had pricked his fingers a few times through experimental poking, and his eyes, though he had never seen their color before, were described to be blue with a prominent rim of bright green in the center, which sounded pretty cool. They had kept him in some kind of tube-safe clothing to keep from being so exposing to the outsiders, an outfit he never cared much for in texture, but was at least given the minimal option for the dark blue color choice.   
  
They liked it when he made choices. For some reason, being able to express individuality gave the scientists a sense of satisfaction, and the young man enjoyed playing along as well as discovering his own preferences. _What's your favorite color?_ Blue. _How long will you keep your hair?_ Long. _How bright do you want your lights?_ Dim. They praised him for it to the point where it sometimes annoyed the young man, fueling his ego past the point of rising, to where the man knew they were purposefully overdoing it for the sake of pleasing him, and he hardly faked a smile to it anymore. They took note of that.   
  
8U88-Y was, according to one scientist, a very lucky code name to be given, three lucky eights in a row. His code name wasn't something he was always able to memorize right away, but it was their name for him, and they wrote it right in thick print on the sticky label outside on his tube; he learned how to read it backwards. Once foolishly misreading the numbers as letters, the man would initially refer to himself as "Bubby," and grew frustrated each time scientists would laugh at the mention of his newfound label. Out of spite, Bubby kept that name for himself, and was very well aware it rolled off the tongue better than the mouthful of nonsensical numbers they gave him. Still, he always found himself favoring the number eight.  
  
And so Bubby would count his days, weeks, fortnights of consciousness every waking moment he could, sometimes more or less impressed by himself than other days. He grew aware of the arching fingerprints on his fingers, the strands of floating white hair that fell into his eyes, the amount of times he'd accidentally bite his tongue while speaking, the unpleasantly tangy taste of his allegedly rare blood type, the vague pale hairs on his skin—that one was a new discovery. There was so much intricacy to himself, and being cooped up for hours on end and stared at with limited conversation time left Bubby to his own devices, specifically to himself. If not himself, then to the tube, observing its built-in speakers on both sides, the thin tubes that lead from his body into unknown machines behind the solid wall, the hatch above his head that was sealed far too tight for him to unlock, despite numerous efforts. While comforting for so long as a special home of sorts, the longer Bubby became more aware of his own conscious mind, the more his home felt claustrophobic.  
  
It felt like an imprisonment.  
  
That same week of realization was Bubby's first escape from his containing tube. The glass hadn't been thick enough to hold him back then, and the night everyone had left to sleep, Bubby's heel impulsively collided straight for the edge of the glass, crashing its first hole through and letting the precious liquid seep away. Alarms blared above his head and irritated his sensitive ears but he continued to kick the glass through, allowing himself to fall from the thin walls for the first time and stand to his feet, only for his weak knees to quickly buckle beneath him. In minutes, they had repaired the glass with him back inside and replaced it with a thicker variant that same afternoon; Bubby himself was taught just how fragile he was outside of this liquid, and compared himself to a chicken in an egg, a squishy fetus unable to care for himself. He didn't attempt escape for a long time after that, but longed to feel that cold, fresh oxygen hit his skin again.   
  
There he sat that busy work day, frustratingly quiet in his prison, only somewhat invested in their tests on him compared to usual. They took note of his defiance, and Bubby took note of their note-taking; everything he ever does in his life is always documented, discussed, questioned, then documented some more, until Bubby is absolutely sure there is no more ways one could write down about how he makes decisions. He felt the need to be normal, whatever normal must be, and was made aware at a very early age that he was definitely not that; there sure as hell weren't any other test tube people like him in the room, and all he ever saw were those outside. Faces he recognized but never addressed by name, fearing he'd grow attached to someone who didn't appreciate him back in the same way, viewing him as another excuse to write something down and ask another question.   
  
With a downward spiral of self-awareness and frustration came a day when Bubby finally answered nobody, not to a single demand or question or statement directed at him through the speakers. His arms were folded and legs curled in on himself, head drawn half into his forearms for partial exclusion, leaving his eyes to swivel about and glare at those attempting to coax words from him. They grew bored of taking notes of his silence.   
  
Something must have convinced the scientists to leave him alone in response to his silent treatment, the last scientist leaving to flick the lights off in his exit through the halls behind him, and it was the first time Bubby had been alone for such a long period. A seemingly full two days of punishing darkness, no sounds to answer him when he spoke out, no functioning speakers to allow sound past his own tense mumbles through the goop. It was overwhelming at first, being left to his own thoughts for a time that wasn't just meant for sleeping, forced to stare blankly into darkness beyond his clear prison walls. Vague shapes of control panels illuminated by the dim lights of his tube were hardly visible even with his supposedly heightened night vision. He wasn't sure if he was terrified more of the surrounding dark, or of how little precious light he had left in his tube.

Passing hours felt more excruciating the longer he was left alone, left to tremble and whisper of them abandoning him and that he was surely going to die here soon in a few days. That his attempts at escape and his self-awareness to his own imprisonment would lead them to terminate his program, confirming his theory that he surely wasn't the first in their attempts, that he was just another failed prototype of sorts, and one would soon follow after him. His choices and individuality were ultimately fruitless efforts in creating the complicated personality of man, and what in the hell did it mean to be a man anyways? What was this profound label if he were the first to live against the very laws that define what makes a human baby in nature?

These existential thoughts didn't go unheard; Bubby was certain his own crazed monologue would be heard if there were those around him, there to take notes of his over-intelligent and hyper-aware brain. His brain functioned too well, to the point of panicking at its first experience with under-stimulation, leaving him to tangle hands through his hair and threaten to bite every strand into frayed chunks and swallow it and throw it all up, if he really had the guts to do so. Until Bubby had reached his breaking point and fell entirely unhinged with instability for himself and his isolated consciousness, with shaking hands and heightened breathing of which he could not control, and for the first time found himself tearing off his shirt and clawing dull nails into his chest to the point of dramatic injury. Raking over and over into the scratch wound until it gaped into his skin, causing the outside lights to suddenly flick back on and blind him as shadows rushed out.  
  
Their isolation experiment was never repeated again.   
  
Bubby's personality was never the same after that incident. They had been testing him even during his worst point, making note of his reaction to his first true period of total solitude in direct response to his first fit of defiance, and they knew Bubby was growing aware enough to where they couldn't discreetly attempt it a second time. The results of his self-destructive behavior was corrected with stitches and a boost of vitamins added to his gel, allowing him to heal quicker with time, though he still never returned to his usual self after then. He became distasteful and uninterested with future experiments, bared his worst and most vulgar attitude towards the scientists, holding a deep grudge for their cruel experiment that fucked him up that day. The scars still barely faded on his chest months later never let him forget how much he hated that cruel period of sensory deprivation, no matter how many series of documents he destroyed after the Cascade years later.  
  
To this day, Bubby still never took his heightened senses for granted. There came days when his ears might start ringing, and he'd go tense until it stopped, or the lights went out in his house, and Bubby would panic until he found a candle. Sometimes, even when there are no sounds surrounding him besides his own breathing, Bubby would randomly phone Dr. Coomer, purely to hear his voice, nervous hands still tracing fingertips over the scars on his chest.


End file.
